


Every Glorious Disaster

by asimaiyat



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alcohol, Comic book logic, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Legends of Tomorrow Episode 1.15 "Destiny", Multi, and fix-it fic, like Len would be proud of how stolen this plot is, most of the ships are very minor, mostly character study, temporary major character death, totally ripped off from the Flash "The Runaway Dinosaur"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 04:45:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6839569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asimaiyat/pseuds/asimaiyat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Right now, you’re… well, you’re lost in time. You can find your way out, when you’re ready. But you might want to think about when you’re gonna end up.”</i>
</p><p>Fix-it fic for Legends of Tomorrow 1.15 "Destiny."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Glorious Disaster

**Author's Note:**

> I had to get this out of my system as soon as I saw that episode. This is a little quick and dirty and heavily inspired by this week's beautiful episode of The Flash, "The Runaway Dinosaur." Title is from "Second Song" by TV On The Radio.

Everything hurts, and somewhere a clock is ticking.

Loudly. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick.

Leonard makes his first attempt to stand. It doesn’t go well.

He breathes deeply, takes stock of the pain. Probably some internal bruising, but it doesn’t feel like anything’s broken. Which is strange, because he should be dead.

He tries again, bracing himself with one arm and gritting his teeth. He stands up. He looks around.

He’s in an alley, the asphalt wet with rain, humidity gathering in the air after a summer storm. Over the steady sound of the ticking clock, a simple melody starts playing from not too far away, getting closer: _Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb…_

When he makes his way carefully to the mouth of the alley, he sees a white truck stopped at the side of the road. His grandfather’s ice cream truck, the one he and Lisa had spent summers riding around in, huddling together in the deep freeze and watching happy kids jostling each other to get to the front of the line, waving dollar bills in the air. No kids this time, though — in fact, he doesn’t see a living soul on the whole street. It’s unreal. If this is the afterlife, well, it’s better than he probably should have expected.

With a low creak, the back of the truck swings open, and there’s Lisa, standing there in her five-inch heels with her gun holstered to her thigh and her motorcycle jacket zipped all the way up. She sits down on the bed of the truck, swinging one leg wide over the other. “Lenny, you finally made it. Come on, sit with me. Like old times.”

Leonard tilts his head and scowls for a second, not trusting what’s going on, but he can’t think of any way for things to get worse than they already are, because after all, he’s probably already dead. He approaches cautiously and curls up in the back of the truck, feet on the floor, welcoming the cool contrast to the heavy summer air he woke up in.

“So where is this? Purgatory?”

“God, you’re morbid.” Lisa laughs. “Not exactly. But you know, why not? That’s as good a way to think about it as any.”

“Helpful.” Len shoots her an unimpressed look. “So what, I’m here until the powers the be decide what to do with me? What a ripoff.” He’d done what he did because he wanted to choose his own fate. The irony, he supposes, is kind of perfect. He’d really hoped there was no God, no afterlife, but it wouldn’t be the first time he gambled and lost.

“No, Lenny. Until you decide for yourself,” Lisa says, her tone a little softer. She reaches out and puts a hand on his knee, squeezes a little. “Right now, you’re… well, you’re lost in time. You can find your way out, when you’re ready. But you might want to think about when you’re gonna end up.”

“I get a choice?” He raises an eyebrow in consideration.

“Think of it like this: you’re the one who knocked over the target at the carnival. Now you get to pick out the biggest stuffed animal. And give it to me, of course.” Lisa grins.

“We never did that,” Len points out. “Would’ve been fun, though. We just rode around in this truck and made Gramps tell us the same stories over and over.”

“And played cards,” Lisa adds. “And he kept turning his head around to make sure neither of us was cheating.”

Len chuckles at that. He learned to count cards eventually, of course, but he never did it in front of his grandfather. He always wanted the man to see him as something better than his father’s son. Better than what he was.

Lisa leans against him, head resting on his shoulder, the way they spent plenty of long afternoons back in those days. It’s so nice and cool in the truck, even the canned music from the speaker on top isn’t getting on his nerves the way it sometimes did when they were kids. Back then he’d wished that the summer would never end, that they’d never have to leave the sphere of Gramps’ protection and go back home. But now he knows better. Every summer has to come to an end, one day or another. And just on cue, he hears the engine of the truck start up. He turns to look at Lisa, sees the sadness that never quite leaves her almond-shaped eyes.

“How am I gonna know? When I get to choose.”

“You’ll know, smartass. Just follow your instincts. You know, use the force.”

Len snorts, but it’s not like his whole life isn’t science fiction at this point. He isn’t surprised when Lisa gives him a gentle shove on the shoulder. “Now get out of here. I’ll see you when I see you.”

“Love you, sis,” he says very quietly.

“Yeah, I know.” 

As he walks away, the doors to the truck swing shut, and it drives off. The canned music gets softer, leaving that ticking clock ringing in his ears. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Christ. That’s going to get annoying. He finds himself moving away from the direction of the noise, walking through the creepy empty streets faster as the sound gets further away, his ears finally getting a break.

He’s gotten to the end of another alley when he feels a lurching sensation, like the feeling of making a time jump on the Waverider, and the scene changes around him. He’s standing at the top of the stairs in the first safehouse he and Mick rented together, a real dump out in Keystone. The wallpaper is a hideous mustard yellow and the whole place smells like stale cigarettes. He makes his way down the stairs cautiously, touching the railing, the grimy wall. It all feels real, but he knows it can’t be. This place burned down decades ago.

Mick is standing in front of the open refrigerator, considering his options before he pulls out a bottle of beer. He turns to Len like he’s been here all along. “You want one too?”  
“No, and you’re wasting electricity,” he snaps back, as if this is normal. “Wanna tell me where we are?”

“That would be a long story,” Mick replies with a smirk. He closes the refrigerator, pops the bottle open, and walks into the living room to sprawl out on the couch. Len doesn’t budge from the foot of the stairs. “And you don’t need the details. Huh. Usually it’s you telling me that.”

“I’m feeling pretty done with irony, Mick,” Len drawls. “So cut the crap.”

“You remember when we first got this place? Right after that fucking armored car job. Jesus, we were stupid. Should have both died.”

“We couldn’t die, remember? The Time Masters had a plan for us,” Len says with as much bitter sarcasm as he can muster. 

“Well, that would explain that.” Mick laughs, deep and rumbling. It’s good to see. Back when they lived here, neither of them had thought they’d ever get this old, so now there’s something reassuring about seeing the creases in Mick’s face when he smiles wide enough. “We were so damn proud that we had our own place. All I cared about was you being safe. Making sure no one was going to touch you.”

“You never quite said it like that,” Len says carefully. But he remembers the way Mick would look at him, would touch him in those days. Like it was some kind of miracle that Len was alive. Which it honestly was, all things considered. “And then, of course, you did burn this place to the ground.”

“Couldn’t control that.” Mick shrugs. “You know how I am. I don’t know where you think you are, but this isn’t about apologizing and making amends.”

“Wasn’t asking you to apologize.” Len walks over, perches on the arm of the couch beside Mick. “So are you supposed to help me make this decision, then?”

“If you need help, which it seems like you do.” Mick looks up at him lazily. “Here’s the deal. You get to pick when you go back to. But there’s no guarantee that you can play it by the same script this time around. Change what you want, but it might change more than you think.”

“So I might risk ruining my perfect life?” Len’s mouth twists in sarcasm. 

“Yeah, yeah.” Mick tilts his head back and drinks half the bottle of beer in one long gulp. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and considers Len. “You’re gonna want to think about this one, boss.”

There’s a long moment of silence — or there would be, except for that ticking. Len wonders if he’s the only one who can hear it. He wonders if Mick is even real, or just some kind of projection. 

“Remember knocking over ATMs and liquor stores just to make the rent on this dump? Coming home feeling like we’d accomplished something.” Len kind of wishes he’d taken Mick up on that beer now. The memory feels sad from a distance.

“The way you looked holding that .45, that crazy grin you got?” Mick shakes his head. “Hell yeah I felt good about that.”

“So I could go back to then, us circa nineteen-ninety-two,” Len muses, staring into the distance. “A simpler time. We could do it better, safer. Bigger payouts.”

“Your back up against that dirty wall over there the second we came in the door,” Mick rumbles. A smile crosses his face slowly and vanishes. “Yeah. You could do that.”

“I have to go, don’t I?” Len asks.

“Sooner or later, we all do.”

Len slides down from the arm of the sofa with grace, straddling Mick’s lap, and leans in to the warmth of his body. The kiss is quick and light, barely there, and then Len’s standing and looking down at him.

“I don’t suppose you’ll give me directions?”

“You’ll know, boss.”

Len sighs and smiles at him indulgently before turning his back. His boots stick to the fake wood veneer floor. This place really is a shithole, but that time? Yeah, he could do worse.

He’s walking through the city again, away from that repetitive ticking that’s driving him crazy. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, getting softer as he strides down the street, toward downtown Central, looking for some way to get out of here. To get back to his own life, for better or worse. 

It shakes him less when he feels that lurch in time again, and suddenly he’s standing on a roof. It takes him half a second to recognize it — the place Rip Hunter had assembled his team of unlikely heroes. Of course, now he knows why they were chosen in the first place, set up to fail by a bunch of cosmic assholes. He paces around the roof, glances down at the streets below. It feels like winter now. He wonders if time is even passing for him, when he looks down at the fire escape and sees Sara Lance’s blonde head, looking out at the city. He lowers himself to the roof and sits with his legs dangling off the edge.

“Well, you must be the Ghost of Christmas Future.”

Sara rolls her eyes as she looks up at him. “Cute pet name, but not quite.”

“So are you here to give me some kind of mysterious advice about how to return to the previously scheduled timeline?”

“Maybe.” Sara shrugs. “I think we left a lot of things kind of up in the air.”

Len smiles in spite of himself. “Oh, if that’s what we’re here for, then I won’t complain.”

“I mean… we could do that.” Sara reaches up to take his hand. He still isn’t quite used to physical contact with her, and the texture of her skin against his own is kind of thrilling and startling at the same time. She looks a little sad. Everyone in this place looks sad, and Len is sick of it. “But I meant that you have to decide how much it means to you. Because the Time Masters aren’t in charge anymore, and nothing is written in stone.”

“And I didn’t meet you until a few months ago,” Len concludes on his own. He nods his head sharply, getting the point. “So the farther back I go, the less likely that I ever meet you.” 

“Exactly.” 

“Then again, can either of us say this has been a fantastic few months? Maybe we’d both be better off if we’d never met. As much as I’d miss… certain moments.”

“Maybe.” Sara twists her mouth in a thoughtful little pout. It reminds him, inappropriately, of Lisa. “But you’re the one who pushed the magic button. So it’s your call now.”

“That simple?”

“That simple.” Sara squeezes his hand. “And at the same time… kind of not really simple at all.”

“Yeah.” 

Len remembers looking out at this view on the night when he first met Sara, and Hunter, and the rest of the team. He’d always hated Starling City, or Star City, they called it now. But he had to admit it was a good view. Maybe that’s why Rip picked this building, to instill some sense of appreciation for a world that was about to go to shit if they didn’t step in.

“Was it that bad? The time we spent together?”

“Well… we almost got murdered a few times, I got caught in a nuclear explosion, you were peer-pressured into almost killing our friend, my partner and I tried to kill each other a couple times, you got abandoned in time and went back to the League of Assassins, we kidnapped a lot of children, our loved ones were threatened, we were almost erased from time, and face it, food from the future sucks.”

Sara laughs and shakes her head. “Okay. Fair. Time travel is the worst. The question is, was it worth it? I never thought I could be more than just a killer. I lost my soul. You’re not supposed to come back from that. But now… thanks to you and the rest of the team and everything we’ve done… I’m me again. I can trust myself. I can feel friendship and love without wanting to push them away before I turn them into something dark and dirty.” She looks into his eyes, her brows raised in that no-bullshit look that, infuriatingly, somehow always works on him. “And I think you kind of feel the same way.”

He only manages a few seconds of eye contact before he looks out at the skyline again. “And changing my timeline would erase all of that.”

“It might.” She gives the smallest shrug. “Ball’s in your court, Snart.”

“You think the timeline might’ve given this power to the wrong guy?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely. But it’s yours now. Trust yourself.” And with that, Sara stands up in one lithe movement, and starts climbing down the fire escape, her body swinging as she jumps down to the next level. He watches in appreciation as she disappears down the side of the building, and keeps looking for a long moment after she’s gone from his view. Then he turns to take the elevator down.

But when he gets out of the building and down the driveway, he just stands there. He can hear that clock ticking, the direction clear on the light wind.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

He’s been walking away from it, wanting to get that sound out of his head, but maybe that’s not what he’s supposed to be doing. Maybe he’s supposed to find the source of the sound. When he’s ready, that is. But he doesn’t feel ready. How’s he supposed to choose how to fix his own life, when he fucked it up so badly the first time around? He never set out to be a hero, but it still feels wrong to go back now. He hesitates there, counting the seconds and the ticking of the clock.

This time he’s ready to feel the earth shift under his feet and his stomach get turned upside down. When things come back into focus, he’s in a familiar noisy, smoke-filled room. His favorite dive bar, Saints and Sinners. Well, at least that makes things interesting. With the number of people he used to meet in here, his next date with destiny could be almost anybody.

Almost. It still surprises him when he walks up to the bar and sees Barry Allen sitting there, a frosty bottle of Coke in front of him and his long legs hooked around the legs of the bar stool. He’s wearing his civvies instead of the Flash suit, and he looks so young, and so out of place.

“Hey, look at you.” Barry smiles and there’s no sadness there, just the same old boundless optimism. “I was starting to wonder if you’d made your way home without me.”

“Not quite, kid.” Len leans against the bar. Of course there isn’t really anyone here, so there’s no bartender to bring him a drink. Which is a shame, because he could use one. “I’m a little stuck.”

“Are you?” Barry looks at him quizzically. “Come on, Snart. You always have a plan.”

“Call it exceptional circumstances.” He shifts his weight against the bar. The music is playing way too loud, like always. Some 80’s hair metal crap. But he can still hear the ticking of the clock, like it’s gotten into his head even if it wasn’t there to begin with. Maybe all of this is in his head. He sighs heavily. “Look… I think you can understand my situation. There’s no part of my life that isn’t a mess. But if I clean up one mess…”

“Then you mess up the parts you actually care about.” Barry smiles sympathetically and sips his Coke. “And you might as well admit. There’s a lot that you care about.”

“If I must.” Len glares at him, drums his fingers on the bar. “But if I have the chance to make things better…”

“I’m not gonna say it, but —“

“Good. Don’t say it.” 

Barry keeps his lips pressed tight together, but his eyes are dancing. Len knows that Barry’s always wanted to see some kind of good in him. It’s annoying to have to prove him right.

“I’m just going to say, let me finish, I’m just going to say one thing.” Barry pauses for a moment to see if Len’s going to interrupt him again. 

“I know for a long time you didn’t know what it felt like to have people proud of you. And that sucks, because I know that without Joe and Iris, without people looking at the things I did and smiling and urging me on, man. I couldn’t have survived the last couple years.” His eyes are shining, like maybe he’s going to start to cry, and Len feels it catch in his chest as he hopes that he doesn’t. “I know you probably didn’t get the chance to learn that feeling enough to recognize it when it comes. But this, Leonard. This is it.” 

Len looks away, grips the edge of the bar hard in one hand. Tick tock. Tick tock. He can see Lisa, and Mick, and Sara, and now Barry, all of them with that look in their eyes that’s a little wistful but maybe not sad, not exactly. Tick tock. He counts down a minute and a half before he looks back at Barry. The tears are gone if they were ever there in the first place.

“You’ve really upped your pep talk game,” he says as dryly as possible, but he feels a little twitch in the corner of his mouth.

“Thanks. I’ve had some practice.” Barry smiles straight at him, and stands up, leaving the empty Coke bottle. “Now come on, we’ve got an appointment to get to.”

“You’re coming with me?” Len asks.

“Wouldn’t miss it.” And Barry is taking his hand, firm and confident, and leading him out of the bar.

It’s anyone’s guess who leads the way when they get to the street. Len knows that they have to follow the sound now, let it get louder and louder as they track it down. Tick tock. Tick tock. Barry doesn’t use his speed, he just walks with Len, hand in hand, until they come to the river that runs through the middle of the city. The water is high, coursing hard with white caps on the waves, nothing like the placid surface that he’s used to. And standing at the waterfront, completely out of place but looking like it’s been there forever, there it is. A huge grandfather clock.

Barry squeezes Len’s hand and lets go. “You’ll know,” he says.

Len walks up to the clock. It’s unbearably loud here, the ticking drowning out his thoughts. On instinct, he grabs the knock of the front panel and tries to pull it open. It’s locked. Not that that’s ever stopped him. He slips the lock pick out of his pants pocket and goes to work, until he feels more than hears that satisfying _click_ , and the panel pops open, and just like that he makes his choice.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading; if you, too, were emotionally compromised by Legends I hope this helps a little ^^ Everyone is welcome to huddle together at [my tumblr](http://reversetrash.tumblr.com) until this all blows over.


End file.
